xx INTRODUCTION

But because the volume of Modern Painters was written in definite defence of a great artist against whom it was alleged by the commonalty of critics that the only merit of his work-if it had merit at all-was in its imaginative power, and that there was no truth nor resemblance to Nature in his pictures, I met these persons first upon their own ground, and devoted that first volume to the demonstration that not only Turner did paint the material and actual truth of Nature, but that the truth had never in landscape been fully painted by any other man. And in doing this I had to meet two distinct classes of opponents, first and principally those who looked for nothing in art but a literal and painstaking imitation of the externals of Nature, as in the works of the Dutch school, against whom I had to prove that the truths thus sought were but a small part of the truth of Nature, and that there were higher and more occult kinds of truth which could not be rendered but by some sacrifice of imitative accuracy, and which Turner had by such sacrifice succeeded in rendering for the first time in the history of art. But in the second place and collaterally I had to meet those men who in their love of system or “composition” disregarded or denied the truth of Nature altogether, and supposed that the Imagination was independent of truth. Against whom I had to assert the dignity and glory of Truth, and its necessity as the foundation of all art whatsoever.

“Now this class of men is a mixed one, influenced in a very singular manner by two opposite elements of mind which yet lead into an identical error. One division of them, the largest, is influenced mainly by that love of system which has above been shown¹ to be the second corrupt element of the Renaissance school, and which, inducing men to take pride in laws, ordinances, tradition and formalisms, seals up their spiritual perceptions, prevents them from seeing or loving natural truth, and leads them to place their whole conception of excellence in the observance of an established law. This is the ancient and fatal Pharisee temper which alike in matters small and great will for ever stand as a cloud in the way of all heavenly light. This class is represented, with respect to landscape art, by the group of Formalists once headed by Sir George Beaumont-men whose minds were made up of “principal lights” and “brown trees”²-whose senseless opposition to the enthusiasm and inspiration of the young Turner changed his kindly spirit into darkness, and in no small degree shortened both his powers and his life. The other division of this class is directly opposite to the Pharisaical one; inasmuch as refusing all help as

¹That is, in this volume, ch. ii. §§ 86-92.

²See Vol. III. p. 45 n.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]